Friday, July 07, 2017

NOT an Affordable Transit Development for Arvada

The Arvada government’s plan to put four stories of 248 apartments on top of a two story parking garage at Wadsworth Bypass and 56th Avenue for the express purpose of promoting the commuter rail Gold Line will likely have little effect on train ridership, will increase car traffic in the area, and will drive-up the cost of local housing.

These are probable consequences, intended or otherwise, of the controversial $30 Land Deal project being pushed by the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority (AURA).

As noted in the KDVR-TV report ‘$30 land deal for developer in Arvada questioned’ the primary point of the land giveaway and the 100 percent sales tax and property tax giveaway to developer Trammell Crow is to subsidize the two story tenants-only parking garage.

But there are reports and studies that indicate all Arvada will get out of this kind of development is a grand edifice looming over Wadsworth Bypass … a monument to government power and largess to a private corporation.

More traffic

More pollution

More noise

Higher rents

Landlord gets a free ride on city services (gets a 100% tax rebate)

Corporate welfare

These are consequences of the $30 Land Deal — and yet six Arvada council members who are supposed to represent you are too afraid to take a stand against this Urban Renewal power play. (The public spokesperson for the scheme, Marc Williams, as mayor has appointed himself twice to the Board of Commissioners of the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority and has appointed all the members, including his 2015 election campaign co-chair.)

Let’s start locally. Listen to this report on Colorado Public Radio from Wednesday, July 5, 2017.

Monica Martinez, executive director of The Fax Partnership: "Studies have shown that if you don't do preservation prior to a transit investment what'll happen is that the transit investment will displace the low income residents with higher income residents who then don't use the transit."

Yet higher income residents is precisely what Arvada government wants.

"Rents go up as transit arrives (often along with new shops and restaurants) and more affluent people move in. And guess what? Those wealthier people tend to have more cars. That’s the fundamental paradox: the people who are attracted to transit-rich neighborhoods – and have the money to pay more to live there – don’t use transit as much as less affluent people who can get priced out."

Ironic, of course, because the government handout to Trammell Crow is for the tenants to have a place to park their cars!

The studies focus primarily on diversity and gentrification around TODs or transit oriented development, but there are real lessons and conclusion to be drawn from the findings.

“The other critical conclusion of the study – which seems to be obvious to everyone except city planners and supporters of more market-rate housing – is that “upzoning” – that is, increased density in specific areas, like the Divisadero St. corridor – is not necessarily a good way to bring down housing prices."

Overall, we find that TOD has a significant impact on the stability of the surrounding neighborhood, leading to increases in housing costs that change the composition of the area, including the loss of low-income households.

Rail mass transit may be a good thing in the eyes of many, but we need not be under any illusion here in Arvada, the $30 Land Deal is not really about easing traffic congestion or providing affordable transit housing options, it is about government ‘insiders’ making deals and about status and pride for certain politicians.

"Our research found that transit investment frequently changes the surrounding neighborhood. While patterns of neighborhood change vary, the most predominant pattern is one in which housing becomes more expensive, neighborhood residents become wealthier and vehicle ownership becomes more common. And in some of the newly transit-rich neighborhoods, the research reveals how a new transit station can set in motion a cycle of unintended consequences in which core transit users—such as renters and low income households—are priced out in favor of higher-income, car-owning residents who are less likely to use public transit for commuting.”

"In some of the neighborhoods studied, the new transit station seems to have set in motion a cycle of unintended consequences that reduced neighborhood residency by those groups most likely to use transit in favor of groups more likely to drive. Utilization of public transit for commuting in this problematic subset of newly transit-served neighborhoods actually rose more slowly (or, in some cases, declined faster) than in the corresponding metropolitan area as a whole. Whether by displacement or replacement, or a combination of the two, in some transit-rich neighborhoods the pattern of change is working against the goal of attracting transit-oriented neighbors: the most likely potential transit riders are being crowded out by car owners less likely to be regular users of transit. This cycle, illustrated above, raises concerns about both equity, because core transit riders are predominantly people of color and/or low income, and about the success of new transit investments in attracting desired levels of ridership.”

If city council members took some initiative they could make Urban Renewal redo this deal, let the free market provide the City with a ‘profit’ that could be used to fix our deteriorating streets … and let free enterprise take its course so we could have new businesses immediately start contributing sales and property taxes for the benefit of us all.